We should also know that the ten commandments of the law are also fulfilled by the two gospel precepts, love of God and love of neighbor. For the three commandments which were written on the first tablet pertain to the love of God, while on the second tablet seven commandments were inscribed, one of which is “Honor your father and your mother.” Doubtless all of the latter are recognized as pertaining to love of neighbor. The Lord said in the Gospel: “On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.” Likewise we read what the apostle James said: “But whoever offends in one point has become guilty in all.” What does it mean to offend in one point and lose all, except to have fallen from the precept of charity and so to have offended in all the other commands? According to the apostle, without charity nothing in our virtues can be shown to avail at all. ..
The Lord now, by his angel, delivers in an intelligible manner, the ten words, or commandments, which contain the sum of all the natural law, and may be reduced to the two precepts of charity, Matthew xxii. 40; Mark xii. 31. How these commandments are to be divided into ten, the ancients are not perfectly agreed. We follow the authority of St. Augustine, (9. 71,) St. Clement of Alexandria, (strom. 6,) and others, in referring three of the precepts to God, and seven to our neighbour. Protestants adopt the Jewish method, of making four commandments of the first table, and six of the second; as they divide our first into two, and unite the 9th and 10th; though it surely must appear rational to admit a distinct precept, for an internal as well as for an external object; and the desires of committing adultery or theft, require a distinct prohibition no less than the external actions. Whereas the forbidding to have strange gods, or to worship images, or creatures of any description, is exact...
